Tuesday, October 02, 2012

It started with Liberated Witch Hats!

Every year Christine, Gail and I go to Gwen Marston's Beaver Island Quilt Retreat in Elk Rapids, Michigan. This year's retreat's theme was Liberated Medallion Quilts. It's a 5 hour drive from London, Ontario but when you stop at quilt shops along the way it takes, well, a bit longer!

First stop was Linda'a Country Quilts in Davison. Christine's daughter Caitie took this photo. This was her first quilt retreat. Gail buys a lot of fabric! Me, I am a nibbler, a little bit here or there and very much project oriented, I don't have a big stash. So it was unusual for me to buy 4 fat quarters with no real plan on using them at the retreat except that Linda's carried the Alexander Henry Ghastlies fabric! I had seen this fabric at my local quilt shop Hyggeligt and had resisted the temptation to buy them not knowing what I would do with them (sorry Chantal), but I remembered the Liberated Witch Hats! ﻿

It started off slowly, on Wednesday, as after Gwen's great trunk show and everybody is getting started on their projects, we had a power failure just after lunch! At first we blamed the irons, but alas it turned out it was the whole building! and later to find out it affected the whole town! We went into town to Now and Then Quilt shop and shopped with flashlights! the rumour on the street was the power would be back on at 6:21PM, at least that is what the recording said. Making the best of the situation we went into nearby Williamsburg in search of quilt stores with working lights! Spent more money at Renee's and then to Acme for dinner!

After dinner the power was back on and we tried to get our mojo back. I managed to accomplish this much on my Ghastlies medallion quilt (working title only). Btw, the pink floral border, was a floor scrap that I found first thing that morning.It was a great match!...at Gwen's retreats you do not throw fabric into the garbage you throw it on the floor so the quilters can go picking!

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Then I lost my mojo again....I had this very nice framed piece of fabric....but then what...I did not know what to do. So I worked on another project from home that had lots of unthinking chain piecing, before I came up with the idea to make a liberated house with some of the characters in the windows. It was kind of a big house... where to put it...?

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I finally decided that I would try to make a tree similar to the one in the tree fabric and create a whole scene and place the house off to the side.

(photo courtesy of Gail)

Another lady, Laurie,, was also working on a Liberated Witch Hats and Ghastlies inspired quilt, she gave me some wonderful owl fabric to put into my tree! She also gave me a strip of Scrowlie cat fabric.

The next brain storm came when we were asked to create a liberated block as a gift for Gwen for her birthday. I thought I would make a liberated log cabin for her from the fabrics I was working with and it turned out fabulous, I had to make more!